Defendant, ISP: DC court lacks jurisdiction over 14,000 P2P users

The US Copyright Group has targeted 14,000 accused P2P users, located all over …

Last week, one of the 14,000 defendants in the US Copyright Group's anti-P2P litigation campaign filed a document with the DC District Court, hoping to quash the subpoena that would reveal his name and address. The letter was sent anonymously, identifying itself only with an IP address. The case concerned a small film called The Steam Experiment, but the anonymous Doe insisted to the court that "he has never used a file-sharing service and does not know what this case is about."

This, even if true, has little to do with a third-party subpoena (which was served on the man's ISP, Cox); the time for pleading innocence comes later. But the Doe defendant also made two claims that have become increasingly popular with those who are against the way the entire litigation campaign is being conducted.

"There is a lack of personal jurisdiction over John Doe in the District of Columbia," he writes, "He has never lived, worked, or used any Internet service in the District of Columbia."

Secondly, "Adding John Doe as a defendant in this matter would be improper because John Doe has nothing in common with his prospective co-defendants."

These are questions of jurisdiction and joinder, respectively, and they get to a fundamental issue about cases that involve peer-to-peer file-sharing: where can they be filed and who can be included in a single case?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation made these two issues central to its own opposition to the US Copyright Group's methods. Appearing two months ago before Judge Rosemary Collyer, EFF's Corynne McSherry argued that both jurisdiction and joinder were improper in cases that lumped thousands of accused file-swappers into a single lawsuit.

The judge didn't buy the arguments—or, rather, she said that this was not the stage at which to make them. Instead, EFF had the right to sit down with US Copyright Group and hash out a letter to the targets of litigation, informing them of their legal rights.

"I would note the court rejected all of the EFF's arguments, including the request to sever any defendant at this stage in the case," US Copyright Group lawyer Thomas Dunlap told Ars at the time.

ISPs get in the game

But that hasn't stopped people from making them. Last week, South Dakota ISP Midcontinent Communications was fed up with a subpoena demanding that it look up the names and addresses of several dozen users for a P2P lawsuit over the film The Hurt Locker.

Instead of replying to the DC District Court, however, Micontinent's lawyers went directly to South Dakota's federal court and argued that the DC court had no jurisdiction over the company. If US Copyright Group wanted the information, it would need to file its request with a court in the Eighth Circuit, where Midcontinent does all of its business.

"Since the information requested is in Midcontinent's office in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a subpoena to retrieve that information would have to come from this Court, not a District of Columbia court," says the filing.

Midcontinent also complained that the subpoena had come by fax only, not by mail or messenger, and that it had contained no promise to pay the company's $350+ in costs to do the lookups.